Ahmadinejad’s Camp Revisits, Revises Gay Comment

Posted on Oct 11, 2007

An aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is attempting to work some spin-control magic on what was probably (and unintentionally, according to the aide) Ahmadinejad’s biggest headline-grabber from his speech at Columbia University: his assertion that, “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

NYT: The Lede:

Now, a media adviser to Mr. Ahmadinejad tells Reuters that he was misunderstood—that the translator failed to capture the president’s subtle way of speaking:

“What Ahmadinejad said was not a political answer. He said that, compared to American society, we don’t have many homosexuals,” Mohammad Kalhor said.

Kalhor told Reuters that because of historical, religious and cultural differences, homosexuality was less common in Iran and the Islamic world than in the West.